Event Details

What is Lean Startup Machine?

Lean Startup Machine is an intensive workshop that trains you in a scientific process for product innovation, to ensure higher rate of success. You will learn the crucial techniques to prioritize and test product assumptions, prove business viability, and identify the true customer value of your product.

By the end of the workshop, you will know how to extract the key insights from customers and conduct the most effective experiments for any of your ideas. With our rigorous framework of Lean Startup tools, you will master the skills needed to operate more efficiently as an entrepreneur.

Your startup will probably fail. What about learning to build what your customers actually want?

Over the course of the weekend you will do the following...

Ideate a startup or work on the one you have now

Practice Customer Discovery

Research your Target Market

Practice Customer Development

Test your Assumptions in Iterations

Understand your Business Model

Iterate and Pivot (when necessary)

Build something you can Launch

Present your Validated Learnings

...and more

Who's this event for?

Any startup team that does not have Product/Market Fit, or any aspiring founder who wants to learn Lean Startup methodologies from the ground up. This is an intensive educational workshop, NOT a hackathon.

Got an idea of your own? Great. You'll get a chance to deliver your elevator pitch at the kickoff. After voting, if your idea gets selected you will be able to form a team and start working. We strongly encourage everyone who comes to LSM to start with a brand new concept.

If you plan to work on an existing project*, bring at least one co-founder with you to the event. If you have existing co-founders and none of them attend, you'll have to work on a new startup idea. But don't worry, you'll still learn valuable skills that you can apply to your own business. Don't show up looking for a technical co-founder...that's not the goal of this experience.

No co-founders? No problem. You'll meet many talented and smart people and have the opportunity to hear their new startup ideas. Whatever you idea you work on, you will learn many valuable skills that you can later apply to your own business.

*An existing project is defined as one that already has mockups, prototypes or code associated with it. If that's the case, you cannot recruit others to join you. It is too difficult for participants to join a team that already has a specific vision, strategy or product in the works.

Mentors and Speakers...

Lucas Nelson, DFJ Gotham

Thor Ernstsson, Casual Corp.

Scott Bales, MovenBank

Heather Gilchrist, Socratic Labs

Brian Watson, Union Square Ventures

Jeff Laretto, Wilson Sonsini

... and many more to come!

We bring together the TOP startup mentors to help brainstorm your idea, share insights into your market, tweak your messaging, look at your UX, and challenge your assumptions in just 48 hours. ONE HOUR of consulting with any of these people would be more than the price of admission and you get them for the whole weekend!

Over $500 in Promotions and Services Included with Your Ticket...

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits

KISSMetrics

SnapEngage

Unbounce

Launchrock

UserTesting

UserVoice

AskYourTargetMarket

LinkShiftr

Balsamiq

Keynotopia

Microsoft BizSpark

Event Schedule...

Friday you will show up, eat dinner, meet mentors and network with fellow attendees. You can bring an idea to pitch if you want to work on your own idea, OR you can bring your existing startup team to work on what you are doing now. After forming teams and identifying customer assumptions, we will break for the night.

Saturday those assumptions will be tested with customers. Most of your assumptions will likely be WRONG, so you will iterate rapidly to validate a new set of assumptions. You will go through several Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), ranging from product pitches, to landing pages, to concierge services that deliver on the product, each with varying degrees of opportunity cost.

At last, Sunday afternoon you will present your learnings to the other teams and to a jury. This is not just a learning exercise, you will actually be competing with other teams to win additional mentorship and support.